New research by experts at the University of Reading could be key in helping people recover their communication skills more quickly after suffering a stroke.

The work has revealed onomatopoeic words are easier for patients to understand and say than normal words. The study saw individuals with aphasia, a language disorder impairment caused by stroke, given a set of communication tasks.

Researchers found patients were able to produce and recognise onomatopoeic words, such as ‘clang’ and ‘fizz’, more easily than normal words, with up to a 20 per cent improvement for some patients.

Dr Lotte Meteyard, from the university’s school of Psychology and Clinical Language Sciences, led the study.

She said: "One of the most problematic things about language is that for most words the sounds or letters of the word tell us nothing about the meaning.

"This makes learning language exceptionally challenging since we have to learn to map these arbitrary sounds onto a meaning. However, onomatopoeic words such as ‘buzz' or ‘splash' are an exception to this rule.

"Our study identified types of words which might be effective building blocks across different kinds of aphasia therapy. The next step is to see if they do make a difference in speech and language therapy studies.”

In this study the research team asked 13 individuals with aphasia to complete different tasks - reading aloud, repetition, and deciding if a word they saw or heard was a real word or a nonsense word.

Individuals with aphasia were significantly more accurate for iconic words when reading aloud or judging if a spoken word was real or not.